Donald Trump’s visit to the White House has inspired some insiders to write books about backstage scenes. Another oeuvre was published in September 2022, «Broken News». Its author’s name is Chris Stirewalt. He was a journalist for the conservative US broadcaster Fox News. On election night of the 2020 presidential election, he was on the job when Fox News announced earlier than other media—11:20 p.m. Nov. 3 (East Coast)—that Joe Biden had won the Arizona race. That was a crucial statement that spelled out the overall victory for the Democratic candidate. That was a blow for the incumbent, and it came from a broadcaster that was well disposed towards him. Trump tried to intervene. Unsuccessful. Stirewalt was the journalist who was the first to explain and justify the editorial decision in front of the screen on election night.
A political dismissal?
Trump then encouraged his supporters to stop using Fox News. In fact, the channel’s ratings went down as a result. And for Chris Stirewalt, his 11-year tenure at Fox was soon to come to an end. In January 2021 he had to leave the editorial office; in his opinion because of election night. According to the broadcaster, he fell victim to restructuring; other employees were also laid off at the time.
Fox in distress
fast Snail mail, also known as the national press, tends to pick up on events when the competition does too. It has been reported relatively widely these days that Fox News is under pressure because of a multi-billion dollar lawsuit from voting machine operators. The conservative broadcaster is accused of fraudulently informing about the lie of election fraud put into the world by former US President Trump. “Infosperber” reported on this at the end of December 2022. The current reports in the major media are an opportunity to once again refer to the insider view of a former Fox News journalist in this article.
Anyway, a year and a half later, Stirewalt looks back in a book. The «New York Times» pointed this out in an article shortly before publication. So far, there have been hardly any indiscretions from Fox’s gut – be it because of the strict confidentiality regulations or because of the loyalty of the employees. Stirewalt and his colleagues at the so-called Decision Desk were exposed to the anger of Trump supporters after the explosive early announcement of the results from Arizona. A North Dakota Senator called for Stirewalt to be fired, saying it was a cover-up.
Stirewalt writes that viewers expecting a Trump victory would have been less disappointed if they had been better informed by the broadcaster about the development of the campaign and thus knew that the race was by no means clearly in Trump’s favour. But Fox preferred to serve its audience with praise instead of contributions that would have strained the world view of the target group. Stirewalt describes the well-known Fox presenter Tucker Carlson and the station’s management as hypocrites who presented themselves as fighters against the media corporations, but were themselves employees of a large corporation.
Ideologues, profiteers and journalists
According to Stirewalt, Fox News is not about pushing through a political agenda, but about making money. The broadcaster does this by speaking after the mouth of the audience and accordingly, against better knowledge, also spreads lies. One may add: Fox News probably operates like other media: there are the group of ideologues in the editorial office who pursue their mission, then those of the profiteers who prefer to think about maximizing income and reach, and finally those few journalists who are primarily interested in analyzing facts. The combination, which was definitely wanted, results in a mixed calculation for the management, which in the best case allows a medium to be given a broad economic basis.
Stirewalt obviously counts himself among the clean journalists. He proved that on election night. After being kicked out of Fox, he switched to the conservative online magazine The Dispatch. In May 2022 he became a political analyst at the news channel «NewsNation».
Subject-related interest of the author
No
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Opinions in articles on Infosperber correspond to the personal assessments of the author.